hello-kalashnikov

Technology has always been hyped and latest buzzword : It is seductive.

Putting down some dialogues from a film shown to me in my lecture:

“A gun is a tool, no better, no worse, than any other tool, an axe, a shovel, or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it.”

The proff. opened the debate by saying : Is it the gun which matters or the hand which pulls the trigger? Few more examples were shown to fuel the argument:

“Low bridges were designed by Robert Moses to stop buses, in which poor black people were travelling to some areas in NewYork. The bridge contained an ideology and embedded racism.”

“Lando Winner made use of pneumatic moulding machines to get rid of Labour Unions.”

He took a stand by saying that gun has embedded values. Mapping all these to technology, students felt that technology is actually biased. Sounds true for a moment, but hang on.

What about the hand pulling the trigger and the man making the gun? I recall from my school days, when my teacher tried explaining, “It is not the knife which cuts, it’s the hand which uses the knife. A doctor will cut to cure a patient, whereas a slayer will cut to take life.”

I wanted to escape the debate, but answering this was important. Though, the fundamentals were hit by the professor at B-School, it became important for me to understand what I was taught in high school was not wrong. Hence, I started digging deeper. I looked at the man who designed the gun and the knife. Look at the piece below:

“There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. `There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it and that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. And we know that as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress”- by Robert Oppenheim, a genius scientist. But what did he make? He invented an Atom Bomb!!

This was a snippet from my lecture on Ethics @ B-School. I really wanted to avoid the idea of right and wrong as they are relative and contextual, but ETHICS hit my roots.

I don’t quite disagree with the idea of Oppenheim making the bomb. At deeper levels he tried making a tool which could help nations to protect themselves. It’s the law of nature to protect and survive. Look at the example of Rhododendron Leaf Curl. “Rhody leaf curl is widely thought to be a protective measure taken by the plant to ward off the drying winter air and winds causing moisture loss.”. Charles Darvin also explained the idea of survival of fittest. Living species feel insecure and those values were embedded in the bomb. That is the reason why at societal level bombs got accepted.

I reasoned why technology is biased and seductive? Technological inventions happen to make lives of human beings easy. I would add up by saying: it is a survival instinct to make life easy. A predator does not want to keep on hunting again and again, though the idea of comfort level can be critically argued! In human beings tendency of survival is highest. Probably that is the reason why technologies get accepted.

Looking at the structure of the society, Giddens explained, ‘ontological security’ is the trust people have in social structure; everyday actions have some degree of predictability, thus ensuring social stability. If harmony and balance is maintained and original idea of structure is kept in mind, then ethics can guide technology. I realise that my teacher at high school was not wrong. It’s completely on us to perceive how things can be. It’s on us what we construct and things we value. I would conclude by saying that technology does not matter!

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